Abstract
Electric quadrupole interactions are normally weak but are shown capable of being exploited once the neutral atom interacts at near resonance. The physical model used here is based on evanescent Hermite-Gaussian light in a vacuum being total-internally reflected at the planar surface of a dielectric. The resulting optical quadrupole potential distribution is restricted to a subwavelength region near the interface outside the dielectric and interacts with any neutral atom approaching it. Conditions that completely prevent dipole interactions but allow quadrupole interactions facilitate lateral optical manipulations of atoms along the interface by the formation of a localized two-dimensional surface of an optical lattice. Such lattices can be used to form an appropriate architecture to implement quantum operations using neutral atoms and ions.